8 Revelations About The Kanye West Sitcom That Never Happened

HBO didn't let "Curb Your Enthusiasm" producer Larry Charles finish, but Kanye West almost had one of the best sitcoms of all time.

Kidding, of course.

Before Kanye stole the mic from Taylor Swift, had a baby with Kim Kardashian, or adopted a god complex, he was to star in a HBO's improvisation-driven sitcom inspired by his life and posse.

After the network didn't pick up the pilot, writer and producer Larry Charles told ComingSoon.net in 2008 he thought the series was "too hard-core" for the network.

"HBO doesn't have a good track record when it comes to black shows, and I felt like that may have had something to do with it also," Charles said. "I don't see a lot of shows about that experience at all. This was very entertaining and we showed it to a lot of people. People gave it a very good response, and it seems to be on the shelf right now."

Last month, footage for the series hit the Internet and everyone was able to get a glimpse of what a Kanye-centered show may have been like.

The cast included Kym Whitley as Kanye's mom Donda, J.B. Smoove as his manager, Wyatt Cenac as Kanye's cousin, rapper GLC as his bodyguard, and Kanye's real-life assistant, Don C., as himself.

1. Kanye West told Larry Charles, the executive producer of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," that he was " the black Larry David."

"He started telling me these stories about how often he puts his food in his mouth," Charles said. "How he doesn't really want to be that way, he just sort of is that way."

2. HBO gave producers a shoestring budget of $400,000 and five days to shoot the pilot.

"It wasn't like they were super excited," Charles said of HBO.

3. Kym Whitley vacationed on a cruise with Dondra West so she could accurately portray Yeezy's mom.

"I got close to his mother."

4. Producers were nervous the show would be "black 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'"

"I wanted to give it a structure and a vibe that was more true to Kanye and his world than the 'Curb' style," Charles said. "There [were] a lot of people going around talking and overlapping. Because that's Kanye's world, that kind of barely contained chaos."

5. Kanye would let other people deliver the punch line.

"In the way 'Seinfeld' was smart about this and Jack Benny was smart about this," Charles said, "he was not afraid to have the people around him be really funny and be a straight man for them."

6. But he actually was funny.

"I think the pain is where the humor comes from," Charles said. "He's not funny in the same way that Larry David's funny or JB Smoove is funny. But he's a great foil."

7. One episode might have addressed the Taylor Swift debacle.

"The hope was that we'd follow him around, be able to shoot a lot of verite stuff like at awards shows, and pick that up and then draw stories from around that," Charles said. "Blur that line between the fiction and reality."

8. The pilot ends with Kanye saying the wrong thing to a Make-A-Wish Foundation kid.

When asked to tape a video greeting for the organization, and he says, "Yo, whattup to all the dying kids. I know y'all my dawgs. And you know, all dogs go to heaven!"

Watch test footage from the pilot below (skip to minute 0:30):

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